In the US, you’ve really made the grade when you buy your first house on Beverley Hills, California, and this month Barclays put its marker down by opening a new wealth advisory office to serve the district.

While not neglecting the mere millionaires already on its client list, Barclays is moving to several exclusive locations, like Beverley Hills, believing the biggest global business comes from the biggest global players.

Wealth has been singled out as one division where Barclays wants to spend more money – it is already three years into a five-year £350m Project Gamma, designed to expand the division’s global footprint – and this was reaffirmed in a strategy presentation by group CEO Antony Jenkins this week.

The bank’s wealth and investment division proved its paces yesterday by announcing it had pushed up pre-tax profits 52% to £315m in the year to December 31.

Like RBS with Coutts, Barclays has recognised that wealthy clients can deliver an excellent profit margin, if you serve them properly. Analysts at JP Morgan and Mediobanca Securities have argued recently that wealth divisions can be a formidable profit motor for banks.

Barclays’ wealth business is particularly keen to increase its return on equity, which rose three percentage points to 13.9% last year. It wants to hit more than 17% in the near future, and move beyond 20% in due course, according to a spokesman.

To find new clients, it has plans to lift its roster of advisers from 650 three years ago, to 1300 by the end of 2014. A spokesman said it is on target. And, to its credit, the division managed to cut its costs last year, despite spending large sums on expansion.

Five individuals will be key to Barclays’ ambitions in wealth:

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• Tom Kalaris, chief executive of wealth and investment management
Kalaris is a member of the Barclays executive committee. He also chairs Barclays in the Americas. Prior to his current position, Karalis was Americas chief executive for Barclays Capital. He joined Barclays in 1996 after 18 years at JP Morgan, where he held several roles including head of fixed-income sales and head of trading and sales. He graduated from Dickinson College, Pennsylvania and received an MBA from the University of Chicago.

• Mitch Cox, head of wealth management, Americas
Cox joined Barclays’ wealth division, enlarged by its acquisition of Lehman Brothers’ assets, in October 2009. He previously worked at Merrill Lynch, where he was head of global solutions. Prior to Merrill, Cox, a lawyer by training, looked after derivative products at Bankers Trust.

• Emmanuel Fievet is head of wealth management UK and Europe
The UK is a core part of the division’s operations thanks to Barclays’ history as a UK clearing bank. Fievet worked at UBS between 2005 and 2008. Previously, he worked at Citigroup in London.

• Didier von Daeniken head of wealth management in Asia Pacific
Von Daeniken is based in Singapore, which has displayed rapid growth in recent years. Prior to Barclays, he worked at Credit Suisse, where he held a series of senior positions. He played a key role building up Singapore as Credit Suisse’s most important client service centre outside Switzerland. Prior to his financial career, he carried out humanitarian work for the international committee of charity group, the Red Cross.

• Chief operations officer, TBA
This post was most recently held by Andrew Tinney before his departure last month. Tinney quit after it emerged in a Mail on Sunday report that he had shredded a copy of a negative report into Barclays Wealth in America. The report was the result of an investigation by consulting firm Genesis Ventures, which found that leadership at the division had pursued a course of “revenue at all costs” at the expense of compliance http://bit.ly/VflzeA. A spokesman for Barclays told Financial News that the bank commissioned the report when it became concerned about issues in North America. Tinney’s replacement will be revealed in the near future.